So, given the way we seem to be going....
Will the world and it's habitants be better?
or worse? (you know - the same old stuff)

(that's 2068)

MG23

21st Mar 2018, 00:23

Sure to be beyond my span.

Don't bet on it. If we avoid WWIII, ageing is one thing we're highly likely to cure in the next 50 years. It's just a question of whether we live long enough to reach the point where life expectancy starts increasing by at least one year per year.

Will the world and it's habitants be better? or worse?

Both.

Regardless of whether we get a major war, we're heading into the most rapid period of change in the history of the human race, and nothing in fifty years is likely to bear much resemblance to today.

To name just a few things that are likely to happen in the next fifty years, if we survive them:

Automation of most low-skilled jobs and many of what we currently consider high-skilled jobs (e.g. machines taking over most of medicine).

Routine genetic-modification of kids.

Sex-bots with artificial wombs.

DNA-printing in your basement.

3D-printing pretty much anything we need locally, eliminating most of the need to ship finished objects around the world.

VR replacing transportation. Why move your body if you can just rent one where you want to go?

The end of mass everything, and the collapse of large nation states into much smaller communities. We may not even have time for nationalism before we revert to tribalism.

Routine use of drones.

The start of space colonization.

All of those are at least in the early stages today with little reason to believe they won't happen. Most of them may not even take twenty years, let alone fifty.

Needless to say, some of those things are not likely to be good for us. Like being able to download the DNA for any virus off the Internet and print it out. Or print yourself an AK47 any time you want one. So it's also likely to be the most dangerous fifty years in the history of the human race.

SARF

21st Mar 2018, 03:13

Phones will get bigger, then smaller , then bigger again

Eggs will be bad for you, then good for you,then....repeat 15 times

Flares will come back into fashion

People will get bored of football

Cash will disappear

Thanks to brexit anglers will be catching 45 pound cod just off the coast

Electric cars will be banned for some as yet unknown health hazard

Global population will be falling, fast..

Alcohol will be banned

A tech backlash or two will have happened

Southend United will have spent one season in the championship before getting immediately relegated

ORAC

21st Mar 2018, 08:25

Only thing I can guarantee is that, after the great and wise have read their crystal balls and extrapolated the future - in 50 years someone will publish their forecasts for everyone to laugh at much they got wrong......

Bee Rexit

21st Mar 2018, 08:27

...

Southend United will have spent one season in the championship before getting immediately relegated

Now you are just being silly! :E Maybe the new stadium would have been started before 50 years is out?

radeng

21st Mar 2018, 08:28

Unless something is done about population control, there will be problems in feeding everybody. That is probably going to lead to a major war, although it is difficult to see between who.

Sallyann1234

21st Mar 2018, 08:40

A nuclear war will have happened, probably started by 'minor' states out of pseudo-religious differences.

ORAC

21st Mar 2018, 08:45

radeng - you are Thomas Malthus and I claim my £5!!

TURIN

21st Mar 2018, 08:47

A sane egalitarian individual will be elected to the position of power in (insert country of choice here)

treadigraph

21st Mar 2018, 09:00

A sane egalitarian individual will be elected to the position of power in (insert country of choice here)

Ah, that'll be me then. Country of choice? Cornwall, which will achieve independence from Devon before them heathens up beyond Northumberland attain their goal... :p

Ooops, better get outta here, I'm supposed to be having brekkers in Croydon shortly...

Impress to inflate

21st Mar 2018, 09:30

We'll all be reading from the Koran !! Trump will still be President and Brexit has still to be signed off

Ancient Mariner

21st Mar 2018, 09:49

We will, however not whizz around in flying cars.
PM me if I'm wrong.
Per

Cpt_Pugwash

21st Mar 2018, 09:57

I'm with Radeng on this, a major war and/or lots of smaller conflicts over dwindling natural resources and probably the Chinese involved in most of them.

Tankertrashnav

21st Mar 2018, 10:21

The very first comic I ever had was in 1952 and there was a strip called "Flip McCoy, the floating boy". He lived in 2052 and got around with a mini propellor thingie strapped to his back. Well we've got drones all over the place already, maybe jet packs will be more commonplace by then. Pity I wont be around to see it.

mikemmb

21st Mar 2018, 10:25

Everywhere will be like a ghost town.

........because nobody will be permitted to get out of bed in the morning in case you stub your toe on the carpet!

Buster15

21st Mar 2018, 10:34

The biggest problems that 'man' with have to deal with will be:
1. Overpopulation. Our planet, which we need to remember is 4.5bn years old is quite small and 70% is water. The natural resources including oxygen in the atmosphere will not last long at the rate they are being depleted. As a so called intelligent species do not own this planet. We simply inhabit it at a point in time.
2. Energy production, particularly in a sustainable way. Almost everything will use electricity. The current methods of power generation can only go so far and nuclear fusion as opposed to fission still seems decades away.

ImageGear

21st Mar 2018, 10:49

It will be interesting to see how they keep the 99% that are unemployed, meaningfully entertained, so they don't eat each other. Cue lots of really, really dangerous reality shows where the prize is to get a year more of life, without being terminated onscreen in view of 100 Billion bored housewives. Involuntary Euthanasia becomes compulsory.

IG

Laarbruch72

21st Mar 2018, 11:07

The planet will have been irreversibly poisoned, and it'll be massively overpopulated. We simply can't / won't help ourselves.

SARF

21st Mar 2018, 11:50

Now you are just being silly! :E Maybe the new stadium would have been started before 50 years is out?
It said 50 years. Not 500:ok:

Fliegenmong

21st Mar 2018, 11:57

You're all 'glass half full types' aren't you??

You well maybe all right...bleak kinda looking future....thanks for the optimisim..

Fliegenmong

21st Mar 2018, 12:02

....Perhaps Russia and China unite to use us as caged animals in an 'Organ farm'....
need a liver (not mine!).....pick that one over there...he's never had a drink in his life...need a leg....choose any from the bottom row....kidney?...we've millions of them...need a bigger d**k? .... let us show you our range....

cattletruck

21st Mar 2018, 12:11

Soylent Green will come in a few more extra flavours.

Millionaires will be the new poor as the trickle back effect ensures today's billionaires are worth a squadillion times more.

More presidents for life.

Less real freedoms.

oldchina

21st Mar 2018, 12:39

We'll be long since gone because we didn't listen to Stephen Hawking.
He first said:
"stop trying to contact alien life by broadcasting our presence"
Then:
"strictly control artificial intelligence because it will evolve faster than we can and will take over"
Put the two together: if we have the misfortune to get noticed by an alien intelligence it will most likely be artificial with no human compassion for a conquered species.
Imagine the outcome.

ian16th

21st Mar 2018, 12:43

Unless something is done about population control, there will be problems in feeding everybody. That is probably going to lead to a major war, although it is difficult to see between who.
We will be short of water before we run out of food.

ZFT

21st Mar 2018, 12:52

I suspect very little change from today as we seem to have lost both our desire and capability for change. How old is the B737 and A320 original design for example!

vapilot2004

21st Mar 2018, 13:31

The primary keys to providing the physical needs of a modern society lie in arable land and abundant power. We're well on our way to having both needs met, and met sustainably.

Social needs are an entirely different kettle of fish, best left to communities to figure out, supported by governments.

Bob Lenahan

21st Mar 2018, 14:26

mmm
much more gummit control,
rich are richer and medium-low-no income are increasing greatly,
1 pilot airplanes.
Maybe.
Bob.

Saintsman

21st Mar 2018, 14:43

Over population will not be a problem because Mother Nature will have redressed the balance with either a global war or natural epidemic just like WW1 and Spanish Flu.

funfly

21st Mar 2018, 14:54

The planet will have been irreversibly poisoned,

Wrong - current life forms might be poisoned but to the planet itself it's just another of the millions of changes that has happened to it over the billions of years it has been here so far.

The universe if a lot bigger than us, why can't people just accept this.

MG23

21st Mar 2018, 16:26

Trump will still be President and Brexit has still to be signed off

In 2068, Londonistan will be the only nation remaining in the EU, and still arguing about whether or not it should leave. The rest of Britain will have seceded long ago, as will the other three hundred and seventeen nations of Europe.

MG23

21st Mar 2018, 16:31

mmm
much more gummit control,
rich are richer and medium-low-no income are increasing greatly,

Worse than that. We're rapidly heading towards a world where there's literally nothing the average Joe will be able to do better or cheaper than a machine. At that point, the 1% will stop even pretending they have any use for the 99%.

MG23

21st Mar 2018, 16:43

Put the two together: if we have the misfortune to get noticed by an alien intelligence it will most likely be artificial with no human compassion for a conquered species.

Nah. They'll probably upload us and put us in a virtual zoo before they tear the solar system apart for raw materials.

Fortunately it's unlikely that they exist, because we'd be able to see them doing exactly that from here. A vastly powerful race of alien AIs wouldn't leave stars wastefully burning hydrogen that they'll need for raw materials in the future. And dismantling stars is something we could see from many thousands of light-years away.

G-CPTN

21st Mar 2018, 16:57

Fortunately it's unlikely that they exist, because we'd be able to see them doing exactly that from here. A vastly powerful race of alien AIs wouldn't leave stars wastefully burning hydrogen that they'll need for raw materials in the future. And dismantling stars is something we could see from many thousands of light-years away.

It is a bold person who predicts that there are no aliens among the infinite number of stars and galaxies, not to mention the other universes.

I like to think of ant colonies being unaware of other ant colonies.

MG23

21st Mar 2018, 17:00

It is a bold person who predicts that there are no aliens among the infinite number of stars and galaxies, not to mention the other universes.

I'm only talking about this galaxy. There are strange things going on in other galaxies that could well be mega-engineering projects. And, absent magic, we're not likely to see inter-galactic travel any time soon.

The problem is that, if we survive to get off this planet, we can take over the entire galaxy by accident in only ten million years. If intelligent, technological life is even moderately rare, there won't be time for a second species to evolve before then.

pax britanica

21st Mar 2018, 17:06

The EU will be a nation state alternating capital cities
The UK will be a developing country using steam and wind power as they ere key when we were 'Great'

Mass unemployment causes resurgence of interest in works by people such as V I Lenin. Mega rich are executed /jailed etc etc leading to a a Google like controlled egalitarian sort of society

Tottenham still haven't won anything

England has still not hosted the World Cup since 1966 , as we pass 100 years of hurt

LHR still has two runways.

The Daily Mail is running a campaign to bring back serfdom and feudal laws as we had these when Britain was a great country.

The Daily Express says Statins are bad for your health

The Russians and Chinese have had a major war , Britain condemned this .

The USA has split back to the North and the Confederacy but with a third element, .the West capital city LA

Texas is now in Mexico following catastrophic error of building a huge wall on the northern not southern border of the state caused by a president not reading what he signed.

Australia becomes the first continent to be depopulated as there is no more water.

trident3A

21st Mar 2018, 17:20

We *might* just have a third runway at Heathrow by then, maybe.

er340790

21st Mar 2018, 17:52

If I'm alive 50 years from now, do you know what I'll be???

BLOODY UNBEARABLE!!!!!

Jetex_Jim

21st Mar 2018, 18:02

Worse than that. We're rapidly heading towards a world where there's literally nothing the average Joe will be able to do better or cheaper than a machine. At that point, the 1% will stop even pretending they have any use for the 99%.

I think you've just about nailed it.

Saintsman

21st Mar 2018, 18:09

I wouldn't worry about 50 years in the future if the Muslim Fundamentalists take over, as we would have gone back 500 years...

MG23

21st Mar 2018, 18:12

....Perhaps Russia and China unite to use us as caged animals in an 'Organ farm'....

Nope, sorry. We're close to being able to 3D-print new organs, and I believe some research group has been growing them in pigs as an interim measure. In fifty years, few people are going to want a second-hand organ of unknown history and genetics when they can have a brand-new one made from their own DNA that's guaranteed not to be rejected.

I'd say the big question about the next few decades, as others have pointed out, is what happens if and when automation reaches the point where 99% of the population are unemployable, and have no value to the 1% even as organ donors? The Glorious People's Revolution isn't likely to happen when the 1% have hypersonic private jets to fly to their bunkers, and an army of killer robots to protect them.

The Millenials seem to believe the 1% will just give them money because the rich are such lovely people and Millenials deserve it. Which doesn't seem very likely to me, either.

Edit: actually, the more I think about this, the more it seems like we're heading toward Zardoz. Except Sean Connery won't be able to beat the immortals this time.

racedo

21st Mar 2018, 19:02

HG Wells Time Machine will have come true.

pax britanica

21st Mar 2018, 19:07

being serious for a moment one thing we can learn from history is that it tends to repeat itself from time to time and no matter how many robot security droids and island bolt holes the super rich have if we get anywhere close to 1% vs 99% the 1% are toast.

Ascend Charlie

21st Mar 2018, 22:07

MG23 said:
And dismantling stars is something we could see from many thousands of light-years away.

Perhaps, but what you are looking at happened many thousands of years ago. If the aliens are doing it NOW, we won't see it until.......well, WE won't see it.